Itachi didn't lunge at the Bishop. Instead, he drove his carbon-steel rod downward, slamming it straight into the high-voltage mag-lev rail at his feet.
SPARK.
The steel rod didn't melt; it was standard military grade, insulated against extreme currents up to twelve thousand volts. But by wedging it between the active rail and the wet dirt below, Itachi created a massive, localized ground-short.
The green magnetic field along the tracks didn't just flicker—it inverted. A massive wave of electromagnetic feedback surged backward through the line, searching for the nearest high-density power draw.
That power draw was Bishop Eric's personal battery pack.
BZZZZZZZT.
The Bishop's midnight-blue coat erupted into a shower of white sparks. His gravity field shattered instantly, the three hundred pounds of pressure lifting off Itachi's shoulders in a fraction of a second. Eric stumbled backward, his obsidian needles dissolving into useless gray smoke as his internal interface suffered a severe data brownout.
"You... you lunatic!" Eric shouted, his face twisting with anger as he clutched his smoking coat. "You just disabled the entire transit line for this sector! The cargo trains are going to stall!"
"Precisely," Itachi deadpanned, his status bar resetting as his momentum multiplier climbed back to baseline. "The next cargo train is currently three miles out, moving at two hundred miles per hour. Because the power line is dead, its automated braking system has just engaged. It will slide to a halt exactly sixty yards from this platform."
He stepped over the dead rail, his golden eyes fixed on the Bishop.
"The board is now clear for a positional trade," Itachi said.
[Skill Sync: The Rook Shift (Cooldown: Concluded)]
[Target Selected: Bishop Eric]
"Wait—" Eric stammered, realizing too late what the Pawn's true objective had been. He hadn't been trying to escape the gravity field; he had been setting the coordinates for a structural swap.
SHIVER.
The space between them tore open. In less than a millisecond, Itachi was standing on the elevated concrete platform, looking down at the tracks, while Bishop Eric was suddenly standing in the dirt below, his boots wedged right next to the smoking, short-circuited mag-lev rail.
And from the dark tunnel behind the platform, the deep, terrifying screech of a two-hundred-ton cargo train's emergency brakes echoed through the pass. The massive metal nose of the train was sliding down the dark track, completely unable to stop.
Itachi looked down from the platform, his black tunic shifting silently in the wind.
"Check," Itachi deadpanned.